by Joan Inong

Created on: May 09, 2009

Body image has always been a big part of people's lives. We fashion ourselves in a way that pleases others, for, our understanding of beauty is that which pleases others will please ourselves. Yet, our definition of body image has been contorted and what we see in the mirror defies, in our eyes, societal definition of what body image "has" to be.

A good example of a person who has a perverted sense of body image is the person who is anorexic. The mirror has truly become an enemy. For the anorexic, body image becomes a constituent of the sense of control. We can control what our bodies look like, and when our life in general becomes out of control, then we turn to body image for comfort.

But, the mirror is a double-edged sword. We use the mirror to look at ourselves, an act which is, in itself, narcissistic and egoistic. On the other hand, we use the mirror to examine our flaws. We look at ourselves to say, "Yes, I like my nose" but we also look at ourselves to say, "I want fuller lips." The mirror is both the enemy and the friend.

Body image is shaped more than by ourselves and our relationship to our environment. We are more than capable enough to determine how we approach the so-called body image problem. But, like Simone de Beauvoir reiterated in her book "The Second Sex" when she said that there is no woman problem but only a man problem, there is no body image problem but a "self problem." We can choose to define body image any way we want. We can either approach it in a negative way by looking at ourselves in the mirror and hating the image that we see, or we can approach it in a positive way by looking at that image and accepting it, and look for the inherent beauty rather than the flaws.

The mirror does not have to be an enemy. We only make it so by our own opinions, thoughts, and actions. It only serves to show us what is there. If we cannot accept what the mirror shows us, then we cannot ever fully accept ourselves. If we look at the mirror and constantly look for the flaws, then we miss what is ours naturally. We often forget that life is not defined by the exterior, though society has defined life to be that way. We forget that we have greater problems arising from what each of us has inside: either hate, love, greed. We cannot fix those inner flaws if we are concentrating on the trivial, outer inconsistencies which we like to call our outer "flaws."

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